Signs against retaining Supt. of Schools Paul Vallas are placed on chairs before the start of the Bridgeport Board of Education meeting at the Aquaculture School in Bridgeport on Monday, February 25, 2013. Many in attendance also sat with signs in support of Vallas. less

Signs against retaining Supt. of Schools Paul Vallas are placed on chairs before the start of the Bridgeport Board of Education meeting at the Aquaculture School in Bridgeport on Monday, February 25, 2013. ... more

Former Chicago teacher Gloria Warner said she flew in from Illinois to speak out against Supt. of Schools Paul Vallas before the Bridgeport Board of Education meeting at the Aquaculture School in Bridgeport on Monday, February 25, 2013. less

Former Chicago teacher Gloria Warner said she flew in from Illinois to speak out against Supt. of Schools Paul Vallas before the Bridgeport Board of Education meeting at the Aquaculture School in Bridgeport on ... more

BRIDGEPORT -- They have launched an online petition. They are knocking on doors. They have staged a sidewalk rally outside Warren Harding High School and even flew a retired teacher in from Chicago.

The campaign being waged by the Connecticut Working Families Party is not on behalf of a political candidate, an election, or even pocketbook issues like the minimum wage or job creation. It is against Paul Vallas, the city's school superintendent.

"It is a gamble any time you stand up for something," said Lindsay Farrell, executive director for the party. "It is about the values for us. Those are the values of the organization and we have to talk to them to voters."

Working Families has three members on the nine-member school board -- and four votes since Democrat Bobby Simmons nearly always votes with them. Some say the effort to oust Vallas is payback for a covert and eventually failed effort to replace the elected city school board with one named by the state.

Farrell said that isn't it at all. Working Families, she said, doesn't want to see public schools privatized and to her, Vallas -- who previously led school districts in Chicago, Philadelphia and New Orleans -- is a businessman who is more about benefiting himself than the city's 20,000 students.

The door-to-door campaign, Farrell said, is about informing people about Vallas' track record in Bridgeport and the other cities, in hopes they will contact members of the school board and urge that Vallas' contract not be renewed.

But a number of parent and city leaders, who largely support Vallas, say Working Families is trying to stop progress and that the information being supplied through the online petition and door knocking campaign are filled with inaccuracies.

Rolando Pesquera, who has a child at Marin School, said they are playing political games.

"All they're offering is more of the status quo that has failed our kids for years," he said, adding that the Working Families does not speak for him.

Ondrea Moore, the district's Parent Advisory Council president, said the district needs Vallas. She said she wants Vallas here longer so the changes he is making will have time to take hold. It will be summer, for instance, before results of the state standardized test given this month to city students, are released.

Comments like that frustrate Farrell.

"Paul Vallas was in three other cities where in the beginning he was making some radical changes," Farrell said. "Some liked the changes. They were all hoping it was going to work out for the best. By the time he left, four, five, six years later, everyone wanted to get rid of him. I think we're trying to not have Bridgeport learn that lesson the hard way."

Vallas said that is hogwash.

He is frustrated too. He said when he arrived in Bridgeport, the district was on the verge of financial collapse and producing the worst student achievement results in the state. "I am saddened by the lengths to which some individuals and special interests will go to defend that status quo. Resorting to outright fabrications, such as claims that we've laid off 50 teachers, are just factually untrue," Vallas said.

According to Vallas, three teachers ultimately lost their jobs when the district closed a reported $18 million deficit. Gary Peluchette, president of the teacher's union, said he believes it was six teachers who ultimately got pink slips, but that many more positions have been eliminated through attrition.

Farrell said her party doesn't like the amount of time students are spending on preparing for and taking tests, cuts made to school supply budgets and how Vallas has brought educational consultants into the district, bypassing the bidding process.

Some consultants came in with Vallas when he was hired by the state-appointed school board. Other services or products brought in were either on state contracted vendor lists, were sole source purchases or were curriculum and instructional items that district officials maintain were "qualified purchases."

Vallas said no superintendent would put something like textbooks out to bid.

"You have a selection committee and pick the one that is best for the district," he said, adding he relied on the city's purchasing office for approval to ensure that purchasing regulations were being followed.

What's in it for them?

The Connecticut Working Families Party headquarters is in Hartford, but Farrell admitted that a good portion of her focus these days is on Bridgeport.

The party, which gets a lot of its financial support from unions, cross endorses candidates who share its working class values. It supported Gov. Dannel P. Malloy two years ago and more recently U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy.

It also has candidates of its own. In Hartford, Working Families hold three seats on the city council, two seats on the school board and an elected registrar of voters. In Bridgeport it has three school board members, Sauda Baraka, Maria Pereira and John Bagley, a city native and former NBA player. Bagley won a seat after the 2011 state takeover of the school board was deemed illegal and the state Supreme Court ordered a special September 2012 election to fill expired board seats. Two months later, the party helped defeat an effort to let the mayor, rather than voters, pick school board members.

Farrell said no one believed with that victory the battle would be over.

Even with Simmons in its corner, the party stands to be on the losing side of a 5-4 vote to give Vallas a positive evaluation and contract extension. The vote could come as early as a special meeting called for Monday night.

The party has support. The Bridgeport Education Association worked side by side with Working Families to defeat the charter question. Peluchette said he admires Working Families for having the courage of its convictions.

"Do I agree with everything they do? No. But I like that they ask questions," Peluchette said.

Farrell said Working Families deals with controversial things in Hartford, but nothing as contentious as is going on in Bridgeport.

"(Hartford) didn't have an illegal takeover or a national corporate education reform figure installed to run the schools," said Farrell. "There is a coordinated, serious effort among corporate education reformers in this country to privatize and change the nature of public education. That has come to Bridgeport."

Political observers are divided on the impact the Working Families campaign will have and if it helps or hurt the party's image.

"If they say Vallas needs to go, their constituency will buy it and believe it and others who already oppose them will still oppose them," said Greenberg. According to Greenberg, the vast majority of people in Bridgeport, even after he has been here 14 months, probably don't even know who Vallas is.

Vincent Mozzarella, a political science professor at the University of Connecticut, said the stance might impact the party's ability to get more members elected to Bridgeport's school board, but probably won't hurt the party's ability to cross endorse candidates elsewhere.

"I doubt any progressive Democrat is going to refuse their nomination," he said.

Gary Rose, a professor at Sacred Heart University, said he thinks Working Families has something to lose.

Baraka and Pereira will be up for reelection in the fall, along with Simmons.

"Here we have reform party not giving the reformer an opportunity to really improve," said Rose. "For them not to give this individual an opportunity to prove what he can do, in one of the worst-off school districts in the state, then I think they are really in many ways diminishing their own reason for being."

Rose said the party risks being seen as obstructionists standing in the way of bold changes.

Farrell, however, said her party does have a prescription for improvement.

She said Working Families board members want to advance an effort to find a viable alternative to Vallas.

"That is moving in a proactive directive," she said. "The search committee is something they are committed to."

The board agreed to establish a search committee but then shifted efforts to evaluating Vallas.

Farrell said a superintendent that would please Working Families is one who is certified to be a superintendent in the state, who has demonstrated success in another urban district, and who can work in a collaborative way with teachers and staff.

Pereira, in a written statement, said it is time to find a permanent superintendent.

Bagley said the district needs a superintendent who can work in partnership with the community and the board instead of "dictating terms."

Baraka said she knows there are excellent superintendent out there. She said she sat on previous superintendent search committees where candidates who could have made a difference in the district's dropout and graduation rates were not ultimately selected.

"As a mother, taxpayer, and Board of Education member, I believe our students deserve the best, and I am not convinced that is Paul Vallas," Baraka said.